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COPYRIGHT DEPOSrT. 



The Fading of the Mayflower 





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LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

APR 12 1906 

Copyright Entry 

xxc. tip. 




75 3«'£l 

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COPYRIGHTED, 1906, 
BY A. N. MARQUIS & COMPANYc 



PREFATORY NOTE 



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Even in Yankeeland, and among the direct descendants of 
the Pilgrim Fathers, the Spring-blossom known as the may- 
flower (or ground laurel) has the ill-luck to be often mispro- 
nounced. It is not the arbutus : it is the arbutus. Hence the 
true English rendering of the Latin name is arbute — the ac- 
cent being, in both languages, on the first syllable, not on the 
second. So also the word 'amaranth* (with a final //?) is 
etymologically incorrect. Milton's word is 'amarant.* There- 
fore the following poem, in contrasting an evanescent flower of 
May with the flos immortalitatis, or emblem of Eternity, makes 
use of the pure and uncorrupted words amarant and arbute. 



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ILLUSTRATIONS 



Portrait of the Author. 



Frontispiece 



But we, their sons, as if to shame our sires, 

Adore a pagan image, — for at last 
The Golden Calf is now a god agen!— 

From Stanza III— See Drawing Opposite Page XVIII 

Priscilla and John Alden— she and he— 
Went to the woods and searched until they found 
As many mayflowers as would twine a bay 

To garland Raghom's head — a sight to see! 

From Stanza XIV— See Drawing Opposite Stanza L 



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In that New Colony now called the old 

There was no gilded pomp which pride begets: — 
No costliness of costume, nor the frets 

Of cut -and -fit, nor worries manifold. 

From Stanza LXXXIX— See Drawing Opposite Stanza LXXXII 



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The Fading of the Mayflower 



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But is it fading ? Is it doomed to die ? 

And is our arbute not an amarant 

But a mere perishable plant 
Whose pink is paler as the years go by? 
. . . There be forebodings ! And I well know why: 

For Hope is cowardly when Faith is scant ! 

Yet still the Jordan and whole Levant 
Bear lilies such as pleased the Master's eye! 
— I think our arbute pleased Him once as well : 

Nor fails it yet to bloom when Spring comes on : 
But dangers threaten it, so that to-day 
This sacred bud of ours — O sad to tell ! — 

Lacks something of the sap of days agone : 
But is our darling dying? Nay, O nay! 



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Thou lately, O New England, hadst a choir 
Of venerable poets of renown, — 
Whose verse, I deem, is destined to go down 
Exempt from Death, — though they who tuned the lyre 
Are now in dust. Those men had tongues of fire! 
Their words were like the jewels of a crown ! 
Or like those signal-lamps in Boston town 
Which Paul Revere saw in the Old North spire ! 
— I knew those bards! They died ere yet had come 
This Pest of Money-Madness ! Else not /, 
But they instead, should strike this warning key : 
Yet who that loves his country can be dumb ? 
I see the peril — so I cry my cry! 
Ye people, harken to my Epopee! 



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With pious tread, and with a pensive mind, 
In homage to our Pilgrim Sires of old, 
I oft have climbed the hill that hides their mould : 
Nor have I ever, with a word, maligned 
Their thoughts as narrow, or their sight as blind ! 
They bade no mass be sung, no beads be told ! 
' It is the Chrisl, the Christ,'— (thus did they hoId)-v 
'And not the Crucifix, — that saves mankind f 
They spurned idolatry, those Chriftly men ! 
But we, their sons, as if to shame our sires, 
Adore a pagan image, — for at lasl 
The Golden Calf is now a god agen ! — 

And since the gold needs the refining fires, 
The land shall shrivel in the furnace-blast ! 



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But be the fiery prophecy unmade ! 

It cannot come to its fulfillment ! No ! 

This is the self-same land which long ago 
The holiesl men who ever knelt and prayed 
Received from Heaven, — while Nature, half afraid, 

Stood shivering lest a mayflower could not grow 

On such a rock, in such December snow! 
. . . To wilt is not to wither! .... Heaven will aid 
Our scatheless flower to scorn the furnace-heat! 

Hath not our Lord a yet remaining rod 

To drive the money-changers from the fane ? 
Our Golden Calf is godless, not a god, — 

And though his beaftly image rules the slreet, 
Yet false and spurious is his right to reign. 



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I love the ever-honored rock where first 

The Pilgrims found a refuge from the waves! 
I love the slanting slates upon their graves ! 

— Those blessed dead, when living, would have curst 
This flame of greed, if then it had outburst ! 

— And are their sons a pack of thieves and knaves? 
Has Mammon bought us, as his willing slaves? 
— Our Fathers were the best of men: and we the worst? 

— O bonnie blossom, thou for many a May 

Shalt bourgeon, rooted in thy rocky soil, 

To testify to toilers yet unborn 
How gratefully, at each Thanksgiving Day, 
Our sires felt Heaven-rewarded if their toil 

Had filled with modest measure Plenty's Horn. 



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The Pilgrims — not so prodigal as we — 

Were not so grasping. Pelf was not their aim ! 
Their pious Charter bore the Lord's own name 
Self-writ upon it, as its guarantee ! 
For while our sires were yet upon the sea [same. 

He signed it in their cabin! They too signed the 
. . .This Charter is our birthright ! ... O the shame 
Were we to sell it for a golden fee! 
Our God is God! He is the God by Whom 
The Pilgrims, ere they reached their granite rock, 
Were well-forewarned that wintry skies would lower, 
Nor would the season show a sign of bloom, 
No, not a crocus, nor a hollyhock, 
Nor an anemone, the wind's own flower. 



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So when the hawthorne of their native land 
Was left behind them as no longer theirs, — 
And when the exiles had with tears and prayers 

Casl anchor on our rude Atlantic strand, 

They longed in spirit for the reason bland [bears 
That brings the mayflower:— (though our May now 
A raucous ill-repute for frosty airs, 

And seems to merit Nature's reprimand). 

— Our Fathers loved the name their vessel bore, 
And looked upon the arbute as a sign 

That Present 111 would turn to Future Good ! 

So too the Shamrock, when its leaves are four, 
Betokens that a brighter day will shine 

On Erin's isle. (And much 1 wish it would ! ) 



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The greater love is for the lesser flowers, — 

The greatest, for the least ! . . . With windy shell 
Let Triton, as a boasler, puff and swell 
In braggadocio of his coral-bowers 
That have no freshness of the dews or showers, 
Nor any fragrance ! . . . Yet the glen or dell 
Where mayflowers grow is sweetened by a smell 
That seems a whiff from better worlds than ours ! 
— Our arbute is the laurel of the ground ! 
It may be lowly — it is lofty too ! 

Yea, doubly high is the repute it bears : — 
For ship and flower alike are world-renowned ! 
. . Our Pasl is safe whatever We may do ! 
Our Future is what God Himself prepares ! 



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So though I borrow trouble from my theme, 
And though my song with heaviness be sung, 
Yet surely never since the world was young 

Hath any shallop on the ocean-slream 

Had such a guidance ! Now I dare not deem 

The guidance gone ! But since my heart is wrung ! — 
O thou my Nation, let my warning tongue 

Curse thy new idol with a curse supreme ! 

Our Fathers hither brought no Calf of Gold, 
Nor did they build to him an altar here, 

Nor wreathe him as a Nile-god or a king ; 

But we ourselves — O shameful to be told — 
Re-gild his image brighter every year, 

Though Egypt's plagues be in the impious thing! 



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The Vikings came — long ere our Pilgrim band ; — 
But back they went, not knowing what they did ! 
Then came thy countrymen, O conquering Cid !— 

Heroic nation ! — ever sword in hand ! — 

(Yet once too often! — for thy battle brand [but hid! 
Then failed thee!) . . . Thou hast gold (they say) 
. . . O find it not, Hispania ! . . . God forbid 

Thy mines be minted to corrupt thy land ! 

— The Golden Calf that first was maledict 

Was one that Aaron made and knelt before, 
Till Moses dashed it down — ignoble fate ! 

But we a worse down-dashing must inflict 
On our offender that offends the more 
As more colossal and more reprobate ! 



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Our sires had meadows, — and their meadows, kine, 
Descendants of that gentle bovine breed 
Who heard the tidings and who ran with speed 

To render to the barn-born Babe Divine 

Their homage ! But this Golden Calf of thine, 
O my deluded land ! — this god of greed — 
This molten Apis — comes to supersede 

The star-led Magi of old Palestine ! 

But cometh he to kneel ? Ah, not at all ! 

He cometh to be knelt to ! O the shame ! 
His image hath a place in every town ! 

And well he knows — as at his feet we fall — 
How like the Philistines, at Dagon's name, 
We brutify ourselves by bowing down! 




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The destiny of man is pre-designed ; — 

But not by man himself. The Pilgrim band 
Were not foretold that such a virgin land 

As their adventurous vessel was to find, 

Would rear an image of a heathen kind, 

And that a Christian nation, great and grand, 
Would let this idol insolently stand 

As typical of such a nation's mind ! 

Our Golden Calf assumes Jehovah's name, 1 
Elohim, the ' Almighty.' For the beast, 

Though dumb, is not insensate like a stone : 

And hence the land to which the Pilgrims came 
Beholds the monster now so much increased 
That lest we throw him we are overthrown ! 



The Almighty Dollar.' — Washington Irving. 



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XIII 



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Three hundred years ago those holy men 

Took ship and chased the sun from east to west, 
And leapt ashore where now their ashes rest ! 

They came, they saw, they conquered ! — dying then 

Ere yet their vision with prophetic ken [guessed 
Could have foreseen or gauged or dreamed or 
The grandeur of their conquest ! — unexpressed 

And inexpressible by tongue or pen ! 

— So how they lived and died— and how their worth 
Outweighed the meagre merit of their kings : 
All this is not a tale for me to tell : — 

It has been told to all the listening earth ! 
But I will mention some omitted things — 

For O I love those Pilgrims wondrous well ! 



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The orange-blossom (in these later years) 

Is for a bride. Our Pilgrim brides were fair, 
But had no orange-blossoms for their hair : 
They wore the mayflower ! Also, it appears 
That pearls were drops too costly for their ears, — 
Yet as to rubies, not the earth elsewhere 
Saw redder lips ! — for O what salty air ! — 
And what ozone ! ... So all the world still hears 
Whose lips were reddest! And as time brought round 
Each anniversary of her wedding-day, 

Priscilla and John Alden — she and he — 
Went to the woods and searched until they found 
As many mayflowers as would twine a bay 

To garland Raghorn's head, — a sight to see! 



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For Raghorn — (in himself a cattle-show !) — 
The Puritan of bulls ! — was snowy white — 
Without a stain : and he was gentle — quite : 
He kindly carried children too and fro — 
As many as could mount him : and we know 
How fair Priscilla, sitting bolt upright, 
And pillow-propt, rode (with a little fright) 
Home from her wedding on his back of snow. * 
. . . Our Fathers had the ivy and the fern ; 
They had the pansy and the heather-bell ; 

And even while their graveyard still was small 
They had the daisy there at every turn ; 
And yet how tenderly their records tell 

What flower it was they loved the best of all ! 



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1 'The Courtship of Miles Standish.' — Longfellon>. 






XVI 

It is as modest as a mignonette, 

Yet runic from the calyx to the core ; 

And could we rightly read this runic lore, 
We might remember what we now forget, — 
How all this wealth whereon our hearts are set 

Is not the wise frugality of yore ; 

For while we glut our coffers more and more, 
We waste ourselves in gathering what we get ! 
This woeful waste is all the proof we need 

That Plenty's Horn is over-filled for nought ! 
... A boon too bountiful is half a bane ! 
. . . To be too rich is to be poor indeed ! — 

The gold unmans the getter : he is caught 
In the long doldrums of a languid brain. 



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XVII 

How dare our Fathers' sons outreach to clutch 
With itching palms of unrestrained desire 
The Devil's apple — golden to admire, 

Yet God-forbidden ! — therefore sure, as such, 

To turn to worse than ashes at their touch, — 
And sure to bring upon their heads the ire 
Which Heaven reserves for mortals who aspire 

To win too cunningly what costs too much ! 

The arbute never grew in Paradise ! 

And so, since Eden bore all other flowers, 

They each partook the curse save this alone! 

O chilly May, thou month of snow and ice, 
Nip not our Fathers' bud for faults of ours, 
But prosper it for virtues of their own ! 



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XVIII 

And though we know how witches once were whipt j 
And how, for men who kissed their lawful wives 
Except on weekdays, there were jails and gyves ; 
And how, when any frisky goat had slipt 
The Sabbath sheep-fold, both his ears were dipt ; 
And how, when tattling tongues, as keen as knives, 
Went hacking ruthlessly at holy lives, 
The gossips on a ducking-stool were dipt : — 
Yet who can charge our sacred bud with sin ? 
It is as guileless as a drop of dew ! 

For neither God nor Nature, Man nor Time, 
Nor seasons going out or coming in, 
Nor any country either old or new, 

Will call our arbute capable of crime ! 





But we, their sons, as if to shame our sires, 

Adore a pagan image, — for at last 
The Golden Calf is now a god agen! — 

See Stanza III 







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XIX 

The nightshade is a criminal, I grant! 

. . . But thou hast no defilement on thy fame ! 

For always when a Sunday morning came, 
And cast a beam of sacred light aslant 
From Plymouth Rock to Shawmut and Nahant, 

And filled the land with Pentecostal flame, — 

Thou didst not fail, O arbute, to proclaim 
Thy holy presence as our amarant ! 
Strange that our sires — the dead of Burial Hill — 

Should have bequeathed by mortmain to their race 
A cast of mind of less supernal mould ! — 
Less Puritan in every wish and will ! — 

Less palpitant to all the sad disgrace 
Of this unquenchable desire 



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XX 

It is a gainlessness miscalled a gain ! 

... A modern Croesus has no quiet hour ! 

Where is his lotus ? How is it to flower ? 
His very recreation is a strain ! 
He walks as one who clanks a golden chain, 

Or sits as one who, from his prison-tower, 

Looks forth on liberty, yet has no power 
To free himself — and there he must remain ! 
. . . The greed of gold outgnaws the iron's rust, 

And eats its way into an upright mind 

As when the wood-work of a bungalow 
Is gnawn by the toredo to a dust — 

All unsuspected till the neighbors find 
A pillar fallen from the portico. 



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There is another borer in the dark, — 

An insect thrice more mischievous to man, 
And which no optic-glass hath power to scan ! 

Nor does it eat its way into the bark 

Of oak or elm — for we can trace its mark 
On man alone ! Its ravages began 
Ere yet the tenth from Adam lived to plan 

A shelter from it in the gopher Ark ! 

It is the Gold Bug ! Welcome be the sting 
Of gadfly, willowgall, or pangolin, 

Or of the woodtick, or a poisoned brier ! 

But unto man the Gold Bug comes to bring 
No transitory itch into the skin, — 

For the fierce maggot sets the brain on fire! 



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XXII 

There have been wonders in the ancient past : 
And there are wonders now, — and yet to be 
But things that are most wonderful to me 

Are fleeting fancies, all too bright to last, — 

And we who clutch them cannot hold them fast : 
So off they go, and never shall we see 
Their like agen, — and terrified are we, — 

And all we do is just to stand aghast ! 

But fears are follies ! So this lyre of mine, 
Which I unwillingly take up, is keyed 
To no excuses ! Let a bard be bold ! 

O lend me for a harp, Urania, thine! — 

Or thine, Polymnia, — forcing men to heed ! — 
For there is danger in this Calf of Gold ! 



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XXIII 

The Brazen Serpent would be standing yet, 
Except that Judah's image-breaking King * 
Took tardy umbrage at the cankered thing ! 

. . . How long are we to wait before we get 

Our needful catapult of vengeance set 

To crush the Golden Calf? — to whom we swing, 
Meanwhile, the censer, — and at whom we fling 

Odor and ointment from the cassolette ! 

For though the tiny gods which Rachel stole 

Had but clandestine homage, nought beside, [ours, 
(And hence she hid them) — yet this hulk of 

This mammoth body with a pigmy soul, 
This huge and gilded bull-calf deified, 

Is worshipt openly and crowned with flowers ! 



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XXIV 

He is our deity of tare and tret ! 

But though he rules with undisputed sway, 

Yet as he fears to fall, — so, day by day, ) s 

Re-anxious, he begins agen to fret, 
Until his image starts into a sweat 

As if the glittering gold were common clay ! 

— Meanwhile, such tribute to him as we pay, 
He takes as if we owe it, like a debt! 
He has remembrances — this graven brute ! [came! 

His thoughts go back to Mizraim, whence he 
His mummied mind retains an ancient sense 
That once the Nubian lands were his to loot ! — 

He killed the lotus then ! — His present aim 
Is to destroy the may flower! — Drive him hence! 







I know not how th' immortal forger 1 feels 
Who gave our continent its wrongful name 
And robbed Columbus of his rightful fame ! 
How grand a larceny! It still appeals 
To human scorn ! It still encrusts, anneals, 

And blackens //zee, O Justice, with the blame 
Of being blind to such a glaring shame! 
... I know not what the Future World reveals, — 
But if 'no sea be there,' then ships and isles 
And undiscovered coasts of pearls and gold 
Will rouse no envy in that heavenly sphere! 
And furthermore if ' nothing that defiles ' 
Is there to enter, — we are thus foretold, 

O Golden Calf, that thou shalt perish here! 




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There was an antique ship of fifty oars, 
And at each oar a mythic hero sat : — 
( A pretty story which we marvel at.) 

This phantom-ship went seeking phantom-shores ! 

And we may follow it as it explores 

The moonlit Lemnos where the lynx-eyed cat 
Would crouch in ambush till the water-rat 

Came swimming shoreward from the madrepores. 

— Our sires, embarking with no mythic masts, 
No visionary sails, no dreamy breeze, 

Met blizzards fiercely real ; for then (and still ) 

A westward prow must face those ruder blasts 
Which to an eastward keel give smoother seas ! 
For thus (though strange) is Nature's fickle will. 









XXVII 

Nor would there have been value to requite 
The Mayflower's Argonauts, I think, if they 
( Like Jason's heroes of a former day ) 

Had won a trophy which, however bright, 

Was naught but gold — red with a lurid light, 
And ill of omen ! . . . So our sires, I say, 
Came not to seek and snatch and take away 

A prize so little precious in their sight ! 

They sought the prize of prizes — which they won ! 
They won it, and they never let it go ! 

Was it a gift of Mars, a Golden Fleece ? 

It was the soul's reward for duty done ! — 

Done with a pride that stooped to nothing low ! 
Done with a steadiness beyond caprice ! 




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Their touchstone was a more than Lydian gem : 
It was a ' periapt * — whose holy fire 
Could further purify a pure desire ! 

. . . Those men would self-accuse and self-condemn 

The natural dust upon their garment's hem ! 

. . . Our goodly globe they deemed a bog and mire! 
Their hopes were ever in the skies or higher ! 

The World Celestial was the world for them ! 

The Earth was nothing ! — it was less than nought ! 
The Heavens were all-in-all, and would be theirs ! 
This was their theme of sermon and of psalm! 

So Paradise — their one and constant thought- 
Was in the easy grip of all their prayers, [calm. 
And could be snatched to make their pillows 







XXIX 

O heavenly gift of slumber ! What a power ! 
It is the harbinger and proof and test 
That God, who visits every human breast, 

Is fond of coming at the midnight-hour 

To nerve the bravest lest their courage cower! 
— The soldier needs a blanket and a rest : 
So He who made our frame and knows it best 

Ordains a pillow as our nightly dower ! 

* He giveth His beloved . . . sleep ! ' And yet, 
O strangely foolish ! we disdain the gift ! 

We sleep but little ! For we dream of gold- 

Which men, though wide-awake, find hard to get ! 
So now the passion of the time is Thrift, — 
For Wealth is aping Honor's rank of old. 






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XXX 

Our sires were poor. The wolf was at their door : 
But they so baffled him from sneaking in, 
That back he gauntly fled to gorse and whin, 

And afterward he worried them no more ! 

Their nets brought many a herring-shoal ashore : 
And though their barley slowly came to bin, 
Yet soon their luscious * Wilderness of Zin ' 

Ran maple-juice like tarfa-gum of yore! * 

But folk who tilled an unfrequented waste 
Nor saw for forty miles on either hand 
A Christian neighbor to be nodded to 

Grew quickly aboriginal in taste ! 

So with impetuous eagerness they planned, 

And launched, and thrice upset their first canoe! 







Our sires ( like savages ) ate succotash 

And assaquash and samp and Indian maize 

( Called ' turkey- wheat * in those Patuxet x days:) 

And though the sea-side wells were oft so brash 

That salt would glitter in the calabash, 

Yet Plymouth in its higher banks and braes 
Had fresher waters — glassy to the gaze — 

Or wrinkled by the frog's perpetual splash. 

In Plymouth village, on its Leyden street, 

The houses one by one till they were seven 

Rose in a twelvemonth; with a church besides; 

Though every house should be a church complete!— 
A sort of earthly vestibule to Heaven! [ abides! 
For what is heaven? A home where love 



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XXXII 

Built they a shelter ? Winds would blow it down ! 

And yet they builded better than they knew ! 

And guests they had — the petrel and the smew ! 
Nor could the winter — (adding to its frown 
Its awful thunder) — ever wholly drown 

The voice of household hymn-books: — whereunto 

The gulls came screaming: — for their noisy crew 
Had habitations in the self-same town. 
. . . The settler's hearthstone!— this must be the place 

Whereon to build a nation that shall stand! 

The home is its foundation ! Here must dwell 
The social virtues! Here must shine the grace 

Which can obey ! — the power which can command! — 
And here all courtesy should prosper well. 








Our Pilgrim Fathers, Christianly polite, 

Were known as ' God Almighty's gentlemen ' : 1 
Nor has the world's urbanity, since then, 

Seen manners lifted to a purer height 

Than when, as if in God's own very sight, 
The godly Puritans, by speech and pen, 
Unfailingly, no matter where or when, 

Gave every man his honor due by right! 

. . . The bayberry candles which our Fathers burnt 
Flung out a flicker of a greenish hue, 

Whereof the glamour made a Pilgrim's face 

Look sour and sallow: yet our sires had learnt 
That as no candle is self-lit, so too 

No soul is lighted save by heavenly grace. 2 

1 Dryden. 

1 The Puritans resented the Quaker doctrine ol the ' Inner Light.' 



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The motive deepest-hidden in the breast : — 

This is what makes the man ! And we are sure 
That if a human motive can be pure, 

The Puritans may let their name attest 

How God to men makes plainly manifest 
That thus, by hardships hardest to endure, 
The soul most shaken is the most secure, — 

For faith is firmest when the hardest pressed ! 

Our sires were toilers for Another's sake, — 

And so, no matter what they undertook, [own ! 
Their business was the Lord's, and not their 

But we, in all the mighty schemes we make, 
Care mainly if they wear a gilded look 
Reflected from the Golden Calf alone ! 






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XXXV 

The grumbling Israelites, for forty years 

Ere yet they reached at last their Promised Land, 
Were daily fed on manna by a Hand 

They never thanked ! . . . But O it thrice endears 

The memory of our sires to whoso hears 

With what a valiant patience, grimly grand, 
They scorned to whine, or whimper, or demand 

Flesh-pots from Egypt, or turn mutineers ! 

No matter how they suffered, they were dumb ! 
Their first and worst of winters was a time 

To hide their misery: so they hushed their moan! 

Their wonder was if May would ever come ? 

It came and brought the bud which many a rhyme 
Shall lilt in languages as yet unknown ! 



--, 



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Is life too short ? Not when we first perceive 
That God and Nature, for the good of Man, 
Have made our earthly term a narrow span — 

To widen it hereafter ! Here we weave 

No finished web ! — for all we here achieve 
Is but a mere beginning ! So our plan, 
Which Death completes as early as he can, 

Implies that we resume the work we leave ! 

And so the Pilgrims, in their pious way, 
Made each a temple of his own abode; 

For ere his hut was scarce a house at all, 

Yet from the ridge-pole — at the break of day — 
As loud a chanticleer as ever crowed [small. 
Announced the hour of prayer, to great and 



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XXXVII 

A peep into his cottage would disclose 

The love of learning in the Pilgrim sire : 
For every morning, round his ingle-fire, 

While yet the January thaws re-froze, — 

And while his children sat and warmed their toes, — 
He from a * horn-book ' helped them to acquire 
Their ABC's, — proceeding slowly higher 

To Hebrew poetry ( in English prose.) 

The mother, deeming idleness a wrong, 

Forbore to rock the cradle with her hand 
But with her foot : So at the cradle-side 

She sat and * did her knitting ', late and long, 
Nor paused but at some hungerful demand 
When her wee Puritan awoke and cried. 



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With chilly elegance the Pilgrims wore 

Their never-ruffled ruffs ! And when they ate, 
What dignity they gave a pewter-plate ! 

They carpeted their table, not their floor! 

And they would fix against a wall or door 
A Magna Charta, which I venerate, 
Or Calvin's Institutes, which I would hate 

Except that I remember them no more ! 

Quintiple points, now pointless ! 1 Folly sheer ! 
For not the pen of mortal can define 

The Lord Almighty's limit ! Shall a priest 

Mark out for the Omnipotent a sphere ? 
So of the Articles called Thirty-Nine, 
I disbelieve in forty at the least ! 

I The five points of Calvinism were total depravity, predestination, election. 









XXXIX 

Nor do I deem the dogma to be true 

That the Almighty Father of our race 
Hath built His Heavenly City in a place 

So very small, and for so very few, 

That only saints, and of the bluest blue, 
And even these by special act of grace, 
Shall ever get a chance to see His face, — 

Although He loves both saint and sinner too ! 

... If Paradise be open not to all, 
But merely to a handful, then I say 

That as an earthling I could be resigned 

To stay for ages on this earthly ball 

Among my mates, nor would I skulk away 
To join a rescued remnant of mankind. 






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The Pilgrim Sunday — eager to begin — 

Had got, by grant from Heaven, a gracious leave 
To start itself on Saturday at eve ! 

The Pilgrim and his dog alike came in, — 

For not to keep the Sabbath was a sin : 

The household webster ceased at once to weave, — 
And household chatter had a dumb reprieve 

Save only for the cricket's chirpy din. 

O cricket, with what never-ending awe 
We hear the rigmarole thou hast to tell ! 
I sometimes think that thy redundant tale 

Is a discourse upon the moral law ! 

Art thou indeed a clergyman? Ah well, 
To beg thee to be brief shall not avail ! 








XLI 

The Reverend Ipse Dixit, if he will, 

May go to ninthly, if the folk will stay ! 
He is behind the age ! The Sabbath Day 

Has dropt its ancient gloom. So Jack and Jill 

May worship in a field, or on a hill, 

Or by a water-brook ! And who shall say 
What moral law such strollers disobey 

Who do no mischief and who think no ill ? 

For He who said, ' The Sabbath is for Man' 
Intended it to be a day of rest: 

But if a sermon wends its weary way 

As Jordan lengthens from the fount of Dan, — 
No hearer of the homily is blest ! 

So let him roam the woods, if so he may. 



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And yet when Elder Brewster's text was read, 
The arbute, as became a lowly sprout, 
Shrank in the high-backed pew, nor stared about, 

Nor slyly flaunted its embellished head, — 

But like a fennel, it behaved well-bred, 

And sweetly tried to sit the sermon out ; — 

For flowers that go to church should be devout — 

Remembering Him who wore the thorns instead ! 

. . . And is our fragile bud to keep its bloom 
Forever and a day? I must admit 
It seems too delicate to last so long ! 

Yet not the trump of Sempiternal doom 

Shall smite it in the least — no, not a whit ! 
The Heavens will do no amarant a wrong ! 






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So though King Jamie, with his weazen pen, 

Morosely wrote of man's immortal mind [bind,— 
As something which the church could chain and 

And though he packed his jails with pious men, — 

Yet now the Church, less bigoted than then, 
Can wink at morals, or be shrewdly blind 
To half of the Commandments if it find 

A lack of grace to keep the total ten ! 

I am no satirist ! I only say 

As one who sees ( for who can fail to see ? ) 
That every slanting-slate and burial-sod 

On Plymouth hill-top, of a former day, 

Now crieth from the ground, reproaching thee, 
O Christian country, for thy heathen god ! 



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Meanwhile our junco * is a bird whose pipe 
Is all the louder if his eager look 
Espies a mayflower by a forest brook ; — 

For even if the berry be unripe 

He swoops upon it with a hawkish gripe, — 
Nor doth he care more than an owl or rook 
For all the task our Fathers undertook 

Whereof the arbute is the archetype. 

O flower, thy very silence is a screed 
Rehearsing what no fairy-tale can tell 

Nor parable can hint, — and yet, forsooth, 

Thou art Cassandra-like ! We fail to heed ! 
For thou art wise in warning us so well, 

But we are fools ! — we disbelieve the truth ! 

The blue snow-bird of New England. 



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XLV 

I say, we disbelieve the truth, yet how? 

1 Great is our Golden Calf ! ' This is our cry ! 

Our cry is false ! We know it for a lie ! 
Yet to this brutish thing we bend and bow 
Until the homage which we thus avow 

Is more obsequious than in times gone by 

When Aaron sinned on Sinai ! . . . Fie, O fie ! 
What would the Pilgrims say if living now ? 
Or what rebuke of theirs would be enough ? 

I think our saintly Fathers would no more 
Regard us as the scions of their stock, 
For surely we must be of baser stuff, — 

Or else what means it that we dare adore 

A Golden Calf set up on Plymouth Rock ? 





They were a hundred souls — no mighty host — 
Yet the Divine Centurion of their band, 
Who by a way they scarce could understand 

Led them to plough a sea, to sow a coast, 

To reap an empire, — now is grieved the most 
To find that we, the heirs to such a land, — 
His faithless watchmen, false to His command, — 

Have proved like sentinels who quit their post! 

. . . How long was Nineveh a nation's pride? 
It was a city whose foundation-stone 

Now stirs at every breeze ! So ye who trust 

That the Almighty's will may be defied 

Shall see your Golden Calf so overthrown 
That ye who bow to it shall bite the dust ! 






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XLVII 

This money-madness, this rapacious rage, 
This playing to the hazard of a die, 
This open theft, this cheating on the sly, 

This rush to ruin, — O ye wise and sage 

Who rule our country, judge ye now and gauge 
These evil times, nor wait till years roll by, 
Lest then — all insolent and proud and high — 

The Golden Calf shall stand from age to age ! 

He is foredoomed to fall ! But when and how ? 
For still his favor is our highest aim ! 

We beg his help with our devoutest prayer ! 

We are idolaters already ! — now ! 

What shall we be to-morrow but the same ? 

— So heave his image from the public square ! 







It is intrusive there ! It has no place 

Save what it can usurp, or We permit! 
—What was the Golden Calf of Holy Writ? 

It was of gold but only on its face ! 

So Moses — since it inwardly was base — 
Burnt it to ashes, and said, * Drink of it ! ' 
Whereat he flung the ashes from the pit 

nto their cups ! — to Israel's just disgrace ! 

Shall we ourselves be chastened less than they ? 
Shall We have less of bitterness to drink ? 
. . . To worship idols is a sin and crime ! . 

Beware ! There is for us a reckoning day ! 
The punishment is greater than we think — 
In thus offending Heaven a second time! 





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XLIX 

There was a Puritan whose name I hate ! 

Nor will I utter it to vent my ire ! 

Three centuries have covered it with mire ! 
Why pluck it thence ? Forget it, Church and State ! 
And let oblivion be the wretch's fate ! 

A Puritan, and yet no Pilgrim sire ! 

He stayed in England, and from shire to shire 
He wrought a mischief which I execrate ! 
He gave to Heaven for welfare of his soul 

A million fragments of the storied glass 

Of old cathedral- windows which he cracked : 
And never by a tombstone did he stroll 

But off he ripped the old memorial brass, — 
As if the Lord would love him for the act! 



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I hope such bigotry has had its day ! 

The hottest gospellers are now more cool f 

Theology — (except in Istamboul) — 
Is circumspect in what it has to say, 
Nor dares to bully in the same old way ! — 

Yet Torquemada does not lack a school ; — 

And Priest and Presbyter, if left to rule, 
Would burn us if we dared to disobey ! 
How strange ! The Church had pincers and a rack ! 

It had the brank ! — the triangle ! — the screw ! 
These are the toys of Christian saints no mere! 
But Mammon-worship has come stalking back ! 

The Golden Calf must needs be burnt anew, 
And we must drink the ashes as of yore ! 



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Priscilla and John Alden she and he — 
Went to the woods and searched until they found 
As many mayflowers as would twine a bay 

To garland Raghorn's head — a sight to see ! 

See Stanza XIV- 











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The hottest gospeller 

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Now when Mohammed saw the Great Abyss — 
(The Gulf of Hell)—* It needs a bridge/ he said. 
So over it he flung a spider's thread — 
To be a roadway to the realms of bliss ! 
And then he said, ' Ye Arabs, heed ye this : 
Whoever is not certain of his tread 
Shall lose his footing and shall sink as lead ! — 
The Heavens are easy for a man to miss ! ' 

.Thus Mecca I How the Academe? Nor mark!— 
For Plato said, ' I have a lamp whose ray, 
Though feeble, yet affords a guiding gleam 
To Fields Elysian, just beyond the dark, 
And not unfindable nor far away, 

But reached by ferriage of the Stygian stream! * 






LI1 

. . . Thus Plato. But the Lord ! O what saith He? 

He saith, ' I have been down and had a sight — 

Not of Mohammed's bridge — (an arch too slight) — 
But of the realm which Plato tried to see, — 
The Land Elysian in the world to be ! 

1 saw the Sheol whereof poets write ! 

So Immortality I brought to light — 
Which still would be a darkness save for Me!' 
. . . These three majestic voices of the past — 

(The Lord's outweighing both the other two) — 
Declare that man is transitory here — 
A bird of passage — of a flight not fast 

But most reluctant to be hasting through — 

Though instinct points him to a future sphere. 



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LIU 

So though this earth of ours, for ought we know, 
May soon or late, to man's forelooking mind, 
Reveal new knowledge, meant for all mankind, 

Concerning worlds above or worlds below 

And how to journey thither, — yet, if so, 

With what shamefacedness a man may find, 
At starting, that his years of greed and grind 

Have made him vulgar and unfit to go ! 

Meanwhile I say, — O arbute, be unstemmed ! — 
Uprooted ! — turned into a worthless weed ! — 
Yea, die and rot! — ere any rabble-raff 

Of Mammon's mercenaries, Heaven-condemned, 
Shall ever dare the sacriligeous deed 

Of wreathing mayflowers round the Golden Calf! 




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LIV 

So lest our Pilgrim Fathers be forgot, 

Or half remembered with a chill respect, 
O pause, my Countrymen, and thus reflect : 

Ours is the chief of nations, is it notP 

The Pilgrims planted it : our easier lot 
Was to inherit it from God's elect ! 
. . . But had our Fathers' cockle-shell been wrecked 

And they been sunk at sea, — then what, O what ? 

O saucy arbute, dost thou shake thy head 

And say, 'This could not be P Ah well, I too 
Am of thy shrewd opinion, for I think 

That Fate is wrongly named, and might instead 

Be christened Providence .... Our sires foreknew 
That not their ship, nor they themselves, would 
sink. 



Sfciii 







Nor long at Lethe's wharf wert thou delayed, 
O flowery hulk! This too was not to be! 
Thy pretty cousin at the Zuyder Zee 

(The Holland hyacinth) is quick to fade, 

And at its fullest bloom is half decayed ! 

. . . Not so the Land of Dykes ! Not so is She, 
Its Royal Rose ! Long be her people free, 

Her realm a garden, and her mace a spade ! 

. . . We are at peace with every foreign sword, — 
Yet swords are in their scabbards not to rust 
But to be drawn! For man must fight his foe! 

And yet, O Heaven, ordain a full accord 
Among a hundred nations to be just, — 
Inspiring each to let the olive grow ! 




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LVI 

I hate the lust of war ! Yet men who fight 
As Captain Standish fought — in self-defence 
Are vindicated by an inward sense 

Of doing to religion no despite : 

So when he snift the smell of smoke at night 
And saw the torches, he made no pretence 
Of pious tenderness in driving thence 

The imps of arson ! Was the Captain right ? 

He rightly rendered to each hostile host 
Of bows and arrows a convincing proof 
That Virtue, certain of its own reward, 

Might risk a sin against the Holy Ghost 
By planting cannon on the chapel-roof 
To teach the savages to fear the Lord ! 







LVII 

Our grandams — spectacled and old and bent — 
Knew how to put their mayflower to a use 
More reverential ! They would introduce 

Both stem and blossom, deftly interblent 

To be a Bible book-mark — such as lent 

The sacred page a fragrance so profuse ' 
As to exhale from prophecies abstruse 

(Like Jonah's gourd) the message that was meant ! 

. . . Our sires discovered that to bend their knees 
Was to uplift their hearts and minds and souls ! 
Has all the old devoutness passed away ? 

But where are now such self-less devotees ? 
So to their ancient Rock the ocean rolls, 

Yet cries aloud,' The Fathers! where are they? ' 



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LVIII 

The world has missed them and will miss them more ! 
The Lord who walked the waves of Galilee 
Saw His twelve fishermen turn pale at sea, 

All fearing they would drown ! Our Fathers bore 

A braver spirit ! Not their rocky shore, 

When first they touched it, — bold as it might be, — 
Was firm as they ! . . . The world may well agree 

That they were men whom kings might bow before ! 

What courage and what conscience ! Neither failed ! 
And merry was their wit : they loved a laugh : 
They welcomed Mother Goose with gay applause: 

And though a fiercely moral frost prevailed 

To freeze their Maypole, yet no Golden Calf 
Wrought rampage on their liberties and laws ! 






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LIX 

For on their mast, amid a sea untracked, 

Our sires had from the first swung out at night 
The Love of Freedom as their lantern-light! 

Prophetic statesmen ! Wise to pre-enact 

A civic polity so well-compact, 

So iron-bound, so rigid, and so right 
That Feudal Europe felt a thrill of fright 

At finding all its fiefs at once attacked ! 

'A church without a bishop* must imply — 

(So said our sires) — *a state without a king ! ' 
A new apocalypse was in the thought ! 

The world will be the freer by and by 

When crown and mitre — each an evil thing — 
Shall perish with the wrongs which they have 
wrought. 




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Nor did those humble Pilgrims seek to claim — 
Or dream of winning — honor and renown! 
Long was their village growing to a town ! 

Long did the Mayflower shrink beside the fame 

Of that arch-mariner who earlier came 
To where the Palisades forever frown, 
And where he dropt the Half Moons anchor down 

In that clear river which reflects his name ! 

How little like unto thy Cavaliers, 

O proud Virginia, was the Pilgrim band ! 

And yet New England said, " To us is known 

A great Virginian — first among his peers! 

So lend him to us ! Let him lead the land ! 
But be the glory unto God alone!' 






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And hence it happened that our first of men — 
Our great Virginian — answered to the call, 
And led the land — (its Puritans and all, 
Himself as pure as they !) . . . And not since then 
Hath Earth beheld, nor shall behold agen, 
A chief so mandatory to appal 
A foe so great, and by a force so small ! 
. . . And hence, O muse of Liberty, thy pen 
Hath put on record — for the times to be — 

How Hope, when dark, and needing visual aid, 
Shall catch a glimmer of a seven-fold light 
Such as at Valley Forge was his to see 

Who in the snow at midnight knelt and prayed, 
And won his victory ere he fought his fight ! 



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LX1I 

So now he sits his horse in Jena Square 1 

And points his hallowed weapon to the sky, 
As if to say to every passer-by 

* All wisdom is from Heaven ! ' . . . The people stare, 

For they are strangers, — come from everywhere, — 
And much they marvel, asking how and why 
His country now, with such a greedy eye, 

Can see in pelf more profit than in prayer ! 

. . . What land has been forefathered like our own ? 
The Temple which King Solomon upreared 
Had walls of lily- work ! — for not as yet 

Had any mayflower sprouted from a stone ! — 
But from the day our arbute first appeared, 
It was our Lord's own lily by brevet ! 



1 This is the statue which the Women of America gave to the City of Paris. 





I WA: 



LXIII 

The lilies * toil not,' but they crown a toil ! 
The lilies ' spin not,' but the vesture spun 
For Israel's pontiff was so richly done 

That lilies poorly served it for a foil ! 

And as for plodders in the mirk and moil 
I honor every lowly craft — each one — 
Respecting all alike — despising none — 

Yet ranking chief the tilling of the soil ! 

The soil is Nature's most imperfect boon : 
She gives it to the sower to complete : 

She lends him helpers in the cloud and rain : 

She links his fortunes with the sun and moon : 
But Thou, O Holy Ghost, Thou Paraclete, 
Must guard him from the over-greed of gain ! 




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LXIV 

Ye Yankees, ask of Dartmouth, ask of Yale, 
Or ask of any college — east or west — 
What is it gives so wonderful a zest 

To such an old and such a threadbare tale 

As I am telling (for I wholly fail 

To keep my promise, heretofore expressed, 
To tell it not.) The answer may be guessed : 

The halo of the Pilgrims cannot pale ! 

. . . No matter how their ship might toss and reel, 
No matter for the tempest and its wrath, 

Yet having once embarked at Heaven's command, 

They sailed as if their consecrated keel 

Must cut and cleave for them an ocean-path 

As straight and narrow as their own on land ! 



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LXV 

So Plymouth strictly kept what tea it had, 

Nor threw it overboard in Boston bay ! 

But Boston loves a whim-wham ! Hence to-day 
The whole great Universe itself, egad ! 
Has Boston for its Hub ! Thus every fad 

Is centered there : — like Karma : — (not to stay 

But just to flicker and to die away 
Like moonshine on a mackerel or a shad !) 
Ye Harvard wizards, call ye up the dead ? 

Can Bradford answer to ye from his shroud ? 
Has Winslow come ? And do ye plainly see 
How Winthrop followed where the Pilgrims led ? 

And are they all a gay, immortal crowd ? 

Then bid these spectres show themselves to me! 




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LXVI 

Mount up, ye ghosts, from where ye long have lain, 
And ride on Raghorn's back ! A bull so white 
Would be so good a ghost at dead of night 

That ye could guide him now without a rein, 

Nor need ye jag his nostrils with the pain 

Of that old iron-ring whose rope, when tight, 
Would jerk him — right to left, and left to right — 

While always he obeyed nor dared complain ! 

And as a chronicler I here aver 

That I have taken pious care to read 

What certain dusty documents depose : — - 

How Raghom — gentle, fat, and loth to stir — 
Was thus the only Puritan indeed 

Whom men were safe in leading by the nose ! 





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LXVII 

Our sires had an equality of rank, 

For so the Lord's own table typified ! 

He was their Master — they had none beside ! 

He sat among them while they ate and drank, — 

And not a lily from the Jordan's bank, 

No, not the whitest, said in all its pride, 
'Avaunt ye lowly, whom the proud deride ! * 

. . . O arbute, are those chains agen to clank ? — 

Were not those fetters broken at a blow ? 

Shall we re-rivet them ? . . . It is too late ! . . . 
What was the wrath that rent in twain the land? 

It was the Highest lifting up the Low ! 

For God is love ! But tyrants are his hate ! 
. . . Beware a second buffet from His hand ! 



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LXVIII 

At this late day, shall our re-trampling feet 
Re-crush a lowly race who still require 
Our help and not our hindrance, to rise higher ? 

Why tread them down? Did God leave incomplete 

A Civil War which He must now repeat ? 
Commands He a re-lighting of the fire ? 
Not so ! I think it is our Lord's desire 

To make this land of ours His chosen seat ! 

He gives us many signs which seem to say 
That all His heart is with us ! Yet I fear 
That as He wept of old, so must He find 

A ten-fold heavier cause of grief to-day 
At all our mongrel worship, insincere, 

Of Holy Rood and Golden Calf combined ! 



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LXIX 



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The soul is flesh-bound ! Every breath we draw 
Reminds us that by Nature's hard decree 
All living things which are, or are to be, 

Are ever subject to the self-same law : 

Which is, that always every hungry maw — 

In man or worm — each in its own degree — 
Will plunder every coast and sky and sea 

By right of hand or wing or fin or claw ! 

If God restrain us not, will Nature ? No ! 

Man is her chief est beast — her sharpest tooth — 
Out-savage-ing the spider and the snake! 

. . . Will the Almighty always have it so ? 

Or will He deem the earth (and soon, forsooth ?) 
A world to crush, re-model, and re-make? 






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LXX 

These things are dark, and past our finding out: 
We grope our way as in a cave of gloom ! 
Here is a cradle — yonder is a tomb! 

Is Life a certainty ? Is Death a doubt ? 

And do we quit the world, to turn about 

And dwell on earth agen (as some assume?) 
And did Pythagoras — who chose his doom — 

Expire in famine to revive in gout ? 

Our sires had no uncertain thoughts like these : 
And many a mind is happier, having none ! 
Yet */ we toy with puzzles — i/we play 

At guessing riddles, — then th' Eternities 
Are problems we may try our wits upon 
As good enigmas for a rainy day ! 




LXXI 



The Pilgrims had their bigotry, O yes ! 

They hated Christmas! — which, it is agreed, 
Is now our proto-feast of joy indeed ! 

We hail its happy coming ! We profess 

That downward from the days of good Queen Bess 
The world has found no saint to supersede 
Our dear Saint Nicholas ! — whose pious creed 

Is love of children, — whom he comes to bless ! 

For it is he who hints to girls and boys 

To hang their stockings up, at Christmas eve, 
In merry hope to find, at Christmas morn, 

That every stocking has been filled with toys ! 
And now no Puritan (as I believe) 

Would vent on Santa Claus a word of scorn. 



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LXXII 

The softest, tenderest hearts in manly breasts 

Are named (as having hardness) * Hearts of Oak': 
So when among our sires the plague outbroke, 

O how that winter's pestilence attests 

The labors of the love that never rests ! 
For in that colony of loving folk, 
Each served the other ! No one ever spoke 

Of first attending to his own behests ! 

So Governor Carver waited on the sick 
Till in his noble humbleness he died : 

No house but had a death-bed : while, as yet, 

In all that winter-whistling bailiwick, 

The bud of May — which was to be their pride — 
Seemed hesitant to show its estafet. 








Our Fathers therefore took the trees for friends, [ speech, 
And found that oaks could answer speech with 
While every rustling poplar, elm, and beech 

Could utter something from the earth's far ends ; — 

For every breeze to which a tree-top bends 

Brings news from distant nations, and may teach 
All listening lands how each should honor each! — 

One's country thus through all the world extends ! 

Meanwhile the royalty that rules by wrong 

Deserves no name of kingship — since a king 
( If king he be by nature) is a guide 

Whom all his people, as a willing throng, 

Are proud to follow, — and to whom they cling 
From sense of duty after loss of pride. 



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LXXIV 

And so King Jamie's outcasts 1 — sad and lone — 
And wistful of the country whence they came — 
Still flew the flag of England all the same : 

Their exile made it all the more their own : 

And when, by civil swords, the kingless throne 

Was more than kinged, how proudly they could claim 
Old Ironsides, whose more than royal name 

Shook every continent and clime and zone ! 

Thus shall the least be greatened by the great, 
For every beggar is at heart a prince! — 
And He, the highest, in a manger lay, — 

Who, going forth without a sign of state, 

But with a shepherd's crook, hath ever since 
Out-Caesar'd Caesar in imperial sway ! 

out of the land." 
Speech of James the First, 1 604 






LXXV 



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One morn I dropt a tear at Bunyan's tomb: 
He lies in Bunhill Fields (or fields no more, 
For they are noisy with a London roar): 

And there I stood and listened to the boom 

Of half a kingdom's traffic — done by whom? 
By mortal men whose death is at their door, 
But they forget it, while with greed galore 

Of pence and pounds, they rush upon their doom ! 

O Bedford jail, thy Pilgrim should be thanked 
For lifting up these earthly minds of ours 

Beyond these greeds that come so soon to nought! 

Our highest good is oftest under-ranked! — 

But since we may commune with heavenly powers, 
The mind should hourly think a heavenly thought. 



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LXXVI 

Now when the Mayflower sailed, a grey-eyed lad 

(As yet unstricken by the later blight 

Whereby, at last, 'his day brought back his night*) 
Might have embarked on board: — and if he had, 
The Rock at Plymouth now would superadd 

To all the glories which it has by right 

The Epic of all Epics! — writ in light 
Such as out-gleamed Olympus, snow-yclad ! 
. . . With what a scorn into the pit of Hell 

He cast down Mammon! — for of Satan's crew 
The poet deemed that Mammon was the worst I — 
'Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell!' — x 

Worse than the Devil's self, — so, of the two, 
Mammon for meanness still must stand the first. 










LXXVII 

And so, O Golden Calf, with what a din 
Thy praise is racketed in all our ears ! 
The daily rattlebang (as now appears) 

Is not enough — so night is counted in, 

To eke the day out! Anvils re-begin 

At midnight ! . . . And along our new frontiers, 
By moonlight, I have seen our pioneers 

Plough all night long! — For gold is hard to win! 

All this is brave, but weakens flesh and bone ! 
It is too much for mortals to endure ! 

God took a week to make the world, they say! 

Why did He dally so ? For it is known 

That Man, who frets at what is slow and sure, 
Would at a dash have done it in a day ! 



Y/2 



\ 






Y <k n 



LXXVIII 

When Samoset said * Welcome!' it was thought 
That peace millennial, hitherto deferred, 
Was drawing nigh ! How oft have prophets erred ! 

The world stood tip-toe lately ! Word was brought 

Of battles fiercer than were ever fought ! 

Cathay, that slept, had wakened and was stirred: 
And we, the West, surmised from what we heard 

That Chaos was to bring the world to nought ! 

O fudge! What fears were these? No Tamerlane, 
No Genghis Khan dare evermore aspire 
To seize a continent in whole or half, — 

For well we know that all the world's domain 
Is now by universal joint desire 

In sole subjection to the Golden Calf ! 



\ 







LXXIX 



N 



V 



>^ 



But nay, O wise Mikado ! Let me throw 

A mayflower at thy feet ! Thou hast forborne 
To ask that he whose laurels thou hast torn 

Should pay thee for the tearing ! ... Be it so ! 

Thou hast out-Christianed thus thy Christian foe ! 
Has Fame a trumpet ? Does she blow a hom ? 
Then let her ask a laurel to adorn 

Another brow! — the brow to which we owe 

The primal thought of this great Pact of Peace ! 
How grandly our Rough Rider overrid 
All haggle, all dispute, all vain delay ! 

He boldly said, 'This bloody war must cease!* 
And so he stopt it. And for what he did, 
No laurel is too green to be his bay ! 



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LXXX 

Each country has its flower: — to symbolize 
(As every flower must do) how brief a span 
Is human life as seen in any man, — 

Or seen in any people. To the wise 

The Book of Nature ever open lies: 

And Nature's method, since the world began, 
Has often turned upon the pretty plan 

Of moral meanings in a floral guise: 

The mayflower is for modesty ! How fit 
That such a plant should have its habitat 

Within the proudest land beneath the skies! 

This is a stroke, I think, of Nature's wit ! — 
To show us how much blinder than a bat 
The glitter of our gold has made our eyes ! 





This glitter is a thousand ages old ! 

It first began while yet the world was new ! 

It still is ever seeking to outdo 
The ancient buccaneering — which, though bold. 
Dared never dream of treasures so untold 

As men now pile about them till the view 

Shuts out the Good, the Beautiful, the True ! 
— Our Yellow Peril is our rage for gold ! 
— No crocodile, no shark has ever sinned ; — 

But man, the sinner, ramps from crime to crime: 
The tiger is more innocent than he, — 
Nor cares to pick a purse, nor is chagrined 

At losing of a dollar or a dime, — 

Nor, like a miser, clutches a baubee. 1 



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LXXXII 



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But though in every man there be a brute, 
Yet also every man (if so he will) 
May bid the inward monster, 'Peace, be still:* 

For * Silence!' is a word to quell dispute: 

And he who in his rages can be mute, 

And who can spare whom he hath power to kill, 
Shall learn that in returning good for ill 

The soul will find its blessedest pursuit I 

. . . The Pilgrims knew the wisdom of the wise, 
Yet never learned the shrewdness of the shrewd. 
They hated double dealing. They disdained 

The craft of courtiers ! So they wore no guise, 

Nor made they a pretence. They merely viewed 
The Earth as lost to them, but Heaven as gained \ 



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In that New Colony now called the old 

There was no gilded pomp which pride begets: 
No costliness of costume, nor the frets 

Of cut - and - fit, nor worries manifold. 






See Stanza LXXXIX 





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— retegsd abuq rtainw qmoq bdblig on esw sl^Xyise 
etetl sHi ion .amuteoo \o aasnilteoo oW 

.bloiiaem safnow ion , in - bxisJleoslQiwd. 



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i dealing. They disdained 

wore no guise, 

They merely viewed 
them, but Heaven as gained f ^u , 




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LXXXIII 

Things that are great begin by being small: 

How soon our arbute pushed itself ahead ! 

Our runic flower hath spread, and is to spread ! — ■ 
Not climbing high, like ivy on a wall, 
But trailing far: — an emblem to recall 

The glory of our Fathers, not as fled, — 

For their indomitable sons instead 
Have simply spread it wider, that is all ! 
The tortoise — slow yet swift — is an adept 

In creeping from his woods without a fear ! [more 
— And tortoise-like, our mayflower more and 
Into the New Hesperides hath crept ! — 

From forest, over prairie ! — year by year ! — 
Till now it spangles the Pacific shore ! 



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^ 



Thus, to our arbute, owe we all our East, 

And half our North, and half of half our West- 
Unnl, of flowers, our mayflower is the best — 
Except our Lord's own lilies ! We at least 
May love it next to these ! ... Or have we ceased 
To pin it in our cap — to manifest 
(As by an edelweiss) a soul at rest 
But when it climbs? . . . Alas, our sacred Beast 
Is what we bow to ! Much art thou adored, 
O Golden Calf ! Thy wide-encroaching rule 
In all our fifty commonwealths is rife ! 
We dote upon thee ! Look ! Our golden hoard 
Out-fortunes Fortunatus ! . . . He — a fool ! — 
To save his wallet, forfeited his life ! 



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LXXXV 



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V 



Ye future bards, how will ye grace your names 
More surely than to key your words and wires 
To celebrate the virtues of our sires, 

Whose souls — all alien to all sordid aims — 

Were warmed with nobler heat than now inflames 
Each racer in his race till he desires 
No simple sprig of honor but requires 

More than the parsley of the Isthmian games ! 

The fate of Atalanta is for thee, 

O thou my Country, if with greedy eyes, 
Amid thy swift career, thou stoop so low 

As to pick up (however bright they be) 

The baubles flung to cheat thee of thy prize ! 
. . . Thou wilt be loser of thy honor so ! 




LXXXVI 



V* 



i\ 



vi 



In these bewildering days how strange it seems 
That this our nation ever once was sane ! 
There is no sanity in greed of gain ! 

Are blocks of porphyry hewn from purple dreams ? 

What stoneless, woodless, worthless piles and beams 
A fool may build with I Come and re-explain, 
O wise Cumaean, by thy warning strain, 

How men provoke the downfall of their schemes ! 

I watch Cape Cod in summer: all the strand 
Has troops of children who, in merry play, 

Dig with their spades to rear an ocean-wall ! 

But we — their elders — we too on the sand 
Are building what is sure to melt away ! 
— A single sudden surge will gulp it all ! 



15 



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LXXXVII 

But meagemess of comfort may exceed 

Abundant splendor that is superfine ! 

So Light and Heat (twin elements divine,) 
Foreseeing what the reindeer is to need 
As food for winter, lure him forth to feed 

(To his content) upon the ivy vine : 

Or if the ivy fail, he sees a sign 
Where snow-hid mosses underlie a mead: 
He paws the ice-crust till he hears the flow 

Of an imprisoned rill beneath his hoofs, 

And then he eats and drinks, and has his fill ! 
So with our sires : the blanket of the snow 

That lay knee-deep upon their cottage-roofs 
Was in itself a warmth, and not a chill. 



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LXXXVIII 

Moreover, all the way to Marblehead, 

While yet the Christian colonists were few, 
The Turks came in, till every house had two — 

A pair of Saracens — not foes to dread, 

But knobs of brass, to be admired instead, — 

And which, when rubbed, would glitter to the view,- 
For heads of andirons then were ormolu, 

To gild the hearthstone with the light they shed ! 

Those pagan Turks, not loth to serve our sires, 
Evinced no heathen glumness in their looks; — 
But now, on all that early-hallowed shore, 

Such faithfulness in keeping up the fires 

In Christian kitchens and in chimney-nooks, 
Is what in servants can be found no more ! 








In that New Colony now called the Old 

There was no gilded pomp which pride begets : — 
No costliness of costume, nor the frets 
Of cut-and-fit, nor worries manifold 
Which the couturiere (so I am told) 
7> Now cunningly devises, or abets, 

Until our later ladies (or their debts) 
Begin to make the blood of men run cold ! 
Our fashions fail of quintessential grace ! 
A single season twists them all awry ! 

A last year's bonnet scares a this year's crow ! 
Each ugly pattern gives immediate place 

To something new. The new is worse. And why? 
Is it the fickleness of woman ? No ! 




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I trace it to Minerva ! She no more 

Has goddesses to gown ! Yet it is clear 
That were she gowning mortal women here, 

She would offend in gusset, band, and gore : 

For not a robe which her Olympians wore 

Was tight and breathless ! . . . Let her rather rear 
Our noble girls and boys to spurn and fear 

The lust of lucre — which the Heavens deplore! 

The world is changing: — not from bad to worse: — 
The spirit of the age refutes the charge ! 

For growth is upward ! Yet I dare maintain 

That since the dawn of time no greater curse 
Hath swept across a continent at large 

Than all this nerve-destroying craze for gain ! 



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XCI 



If Nature breaks a ruby in a mine, 

The stone will mend itself — the hurt will heal — 
The gem will cicatrize through power to feel! — 

For not a crystal could be crystalline 

Except that Life be there — which is a sign 
That Death is a revealer — to reveal 
Whatever secrets Time and Tomb conceal : 

For human ashes hide a spark divine ! 

. . . O thou my Country, will thy life be long? 
Or wilt thou perish quickly? Who can tell? 
Thy flag now ornaments the whole earth's face! 

So launch thy battleships, and be thou strong! 
Thy realm is wide, thou must defend it well ! 
Meanwhile thy Golden Calf is thy disgrace ! 



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XCII 



&. 



Ye Stars and Stripes, your primal pride was grand ! 
What saw ye from your flag-staff on the morn 
When first — amid our nation newly-bom — 

Ye gazed upon our thousand leagues of land — 

All constituting — fresh from Nature's hand — 

The Poor Man's country! No prophetic Nom 
Then showed ye in advance the Gilded Horn 

Of our successor to the Pilgrim band ! 

What see ye from your flag-staff now to-day ? 

Is it the Rich Man's country, having lost [then? — 
The Poor Man's blessing? For if so, what 

Why then, O thou my song be bold to say 

We lose the Poor Man's blessing at the cost 
Of losing with it, also, God's Amen ! 



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XCIII 

Our Pilgrim Fathers came to plough and sow ! 

The seed-bag held their fortunes! Toils like theirs 
(With Heaven's auxiliary of answered prayers) 

Kept warm their winter- wheat beneath the snow; — 

And if the summer with belated glow 

Held back their hopes and multiplied their cares, — 
Yet even now no 'staff of life' compares, 

O Saint Botolphus, with thine own! For lo! 

It is a loaf which all the week is white, 

But changes every Sunday into brown, — 
Robust with beany phosphor to restore 

The six days' waste in that perpetual fight [down — 
Which still is fought where Bunker Hill looks 
(For Life is still a Battle as of yore.) 



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XCIV 

O Triple Mountain, be thy memory jogged ! 

Thy past is growing hazy and opaque ! 

Not even Boston now would undertake 
To have its Quaker-women stript and flogged ! 
The female mind, if darkened and befogged, 

Needs other light than faggots and a stake ! 

Yet Boston ladies have, for conscience* sake, 
Been hung, and aureoled, and catalogued ! 
O Mary Dyer, 1 thy name hath thus emerged 

From shame to honor ! Yea, O William Penn, 
Hadst thou thyself been hung, or shot, or broiled, 
Or locked in jail, or loosed but to be scourged, — 

Thou wouldst to-day be named among the men 
Whom Clio with her stylus never soiled ! 2 



1 Hanged on Boston Common, 1660, for Quaker speeches. 

2 See Macaulay. 



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Meanwhile the Lion and the Unicom 
Keep up an old dispute forever new : 
Are Health and Beauty one, or are they two? 

The 'fairest fair' is she whom both adorn! 

So Pilgrim maidens, on the Mayday morn, 

Ran out and washed their faces with the dew, 
In happy hope to keep — the whole year through 

The bloom to which those ocean-nymphs were born ! 

Have we a custom not akin to this ? 

Is woman's beauty but a false pretence ? 
(I speak of lady-paint, to be precise !) 

Now how can painted cheeks deserve a kiss? 
O Modesty, go back to Common Sense ! 
O Virtue, leave all gaudiness to Vice ! 



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XCVI 

But O ye damsels of my honored land, 

Who seek with high ambition to be great, 
And who can purchase semi-royal state 

By paying for it with a milk-white hand 

(Which means a bank-account, you understand,) 
Make haste, I say, or ye will be too late, — 
Since eligible dukes with whom to mate 

Are now too few to fill the great demand ! 

Some five are left in France — some eight, in Spain- 
All poor yet proud, and pensively antique — 
Though some in Portugal are 'ever gay* 

(For so that nation is). In Rome remain 

Some bargains yet in viscounts (so to speak.) 
But dukes are dear delusions passed away ! 







f A 



3 



And hence the Yankee maiden grandly grieves! 

She is an heiress — so her heart is sore! 

Strange agony! Her 'auto,' on its door, 
Hath still no 'coronet*! — though she believes 
Her dukedom is to come! So while she heaves 

Her heavy heart, which has a ducal core, 

She wonders where the duchesses of yore 
Bought pre-historic lace to fluff their sleeves ! 
Yes, she would be a duchess! She is proud, 

As proud as Lilith, but of purer mind — 
Full of humility though rich and grand — 
A lowly woman loftily endowed — 

Revering God and Nature and Mankind — 
And lucky is the duke who wins her hand ! 




XCVIII 



5. 



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In days gone by, ere yet the Iron Horse 
Had terrified a graveyard or a glen, 
There was a quietude of mind in men: — 

The green of meadows was a moral force: — 

The Peace of God seemed rooted in the gorse! 
Morever, where a ringdove or a wren 
Once built his nest, he built it there agen : — 

For Nature kept her old Arcadian course. 

But now our Eagle with his busy beak 

Swoops down upon us at the dawn of day;™ 
And all day long he rips our vitals out ! 

He is no Puritan ! His greed is Greek ! 

Our brains and nerves are his Promethean prey! 
But we shall tame him yet, I have no doubt. 



Yk 








XCIX 

And how? The plan is plain — yet not so plain 
But that it is a riddle hard to guess! . . . 
What is enough ? . . . Now if a man possess 

A just sufficiency of wordly gain, 

He needs no more. . . . And yet with toil and pain, 
And oft with strong, delirious, fierce distress, 
He cries, 'Thou soul of mine, now push and press 

Toward other millions which thou must attain ! * 

Then if he wins them in a year or two, 

Has he enough? And is his soul content? 
He chuckles, but is greedier than before!— 

Out-crazing ancient Midas ! . . . Midas knew 

He had too much The modern man is bent, 

Not on enough, but on too much, and more ! 



55 



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I am no laureate of a church or creed, 
Yet if a dozen prophets, each divine, 
With Malachi, the latest of the line, 

Should all cry out to threaten, warn, or plead, 

Yet vain would be their ram Vhom or their reed : 
So why should this mere scrannel-pipe of mine 
Attempt to blare a punishment condign 

Against the Golden Calf — with none to heed? 

I cast no horoscope of blight and bane ! 
I think no evil of my native land ! 

It is the land of lands ! Can it deserve 

An early wasting of its brawn and brain? 
Meanwhile its toilers ought to understand 

The precious worth of the unshattered nerve ! 



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We live our lives at far too fast a rate ! 

We crowd too much into too little time ! 

Go watch the mountaineers who wisely climb : 
They hasten slowly, for their toil is great ! 
We work and overwork — all day till late: 

And then (like harlequins in pantomime) 

We fool the night away until the prime ! 
... So worms shall eat us at an early date ! 
Meanwhile, O Golden Calf, we give thee what? 

We give thee all our thought and nerve and will ! 
We immolate our bodies and our minds ! 
Thus hath our over-wealth enriched us not ! 

Are we a people grinding at a mill? 

The mill is grinding us — and grinds and grinds! 






v <k % 



The workman at his work I love to see: 
And yet I love to see him pause awhile 
When noon is rung, and when he stops to smile 

And to salute his wife (or it may be 

His daughter) who has cooked his 'fricazee' 
And brings it to him in the rustic style, 
And who, to comfort him, and to beguile 

His noonday hour, sits with him vis-a-vis! 

Now as the grapes of Eschol were a bunch 
To gladden hungry Anaks in the East, 
So, O my Country, let us see at noon 

Our million workmen eating for their lunch 
King Harry's capon, — leg or wing at least: 

And let the night bring Sancho Panza's boon ! 







V 



cm 

For when our days are worried, let our nights 

Knit up anew our raveled sleave of care ! 

The early slumber mends the wear and tear ! 
Why banish darkness, like the Sybarites ? 
Yet what had Sybaris for festal lights 

Save torches which a breath of wind would flare ? 

We have the Jovian flash with all its glare ! 
While all the poisons tempt our appetites ! 
Our wealth, as yet, is only for the few, 

Not for the many. This may make us base ! 
Our ways are worldly. This may make us blind ! 
We cannot keep our greed and glory too ! 

We are no miserly, ignoble race ! 

Nor are our ethics of the cobweb kind ! 



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It is a sin to steal a pin, I know : 

But is it wrong to catch a salmon ? Nay ! 

Our Fathers fished in Izak Walton's way — 
Well-tackled, wisely knowing where to go, 
And how to rob the pool at every throw ! 

But salmon — plenty then — are scarce to-day: 

Is this a proof of Puritan decay? 
. . . The Golden Calf is what will bring us low! 
For in the Table of the Turpitudes 

The chief is sordidness ! It heads the list ! 

Be warned ! It speedeth nations to their fall ! 
Where cities prospered, there the bittern broods ! 

The Evils are but one : none else exist : 
The Love of Lucre is the root of all! 






* ^ 



It is the chief, the universal sin ! 

Not new but old ! — and dating farther back 
Than to Iscariot and his leather-sack ! 

A man is proud of what he prospers in : 

So goodly burghers think the wealth they win 

Will buy for them whatever boon they lack ! [ knack 
. . .O Hope! — thou flying fish! — thou hast the 

To spurn a wave — but thou art faint of fin ! 

So any dolphin's maw, in any sea, 
May be thy only harbor in a storm, 

For in a twinkling thou art out of breath ! 

. . . Our sires, when they were tempest-tossed like thee, — 
Braved every ill of life, in every form, 

By reason of the faith that conquers death ! 





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CVI 

But faith is free ! It is of many kinds ! 

Let every man be manful for his own ! 

Our Fathers prayed and fasted. Flesh and bone 
Are not the soul. So meditative minds 
Will need the balm which every seeker finds — 

If so he will. There is a peace unknown : 

It passeth knowledge ! Faith is thus alone 
The one enthralment freeing whom it binds ! 
Hence there were soulful wonders in those days ! — 

Magnalian marvels ! " ! — God was close to men ! — 
Nor is He ever distant ! No indeed ! 
Yet we offend Him now in many ways : 

He may not come so near to us agen ! 

Cares He for money-bags ? He hates our greed ! 








V 



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We too begin to hate it ! For our eyes 
Are slowly opening to the bane it brings ! 
... Do riches have a trick of taking wings ? 

... A lucre-laden mortal finds it wise 

To set his wealth a-flying ere he dies ! 
Go on, ye billionaires, outrival kings 
In broadcast bounty ! For the hand that clings 

With miser-clutch knows not what money buys ! — 

It buys the luxury of doing good ! 

. . . Hast thou a money-vault where pelf is stored ? 
Unlock thy coffer — throw the key away ! 

The ring of Gyges — (fling it where he would ! ) — 
Came back to him ! ... ye lenders to the Lord, 
How shrewd ye are! ye know He will repay! 



s 






CVIII 

The Pilgrims lived as at a heavenly height! 

This earth of ours was not their all-in-all ! 

No wind could whisper, and no brook could brawl 
But spake to them of that All-Potent Might 
Which wisely guides this wayward world aright, 

And which beyond this mere terrestrial ball 

Hath girt a City with a Jasper Wall — 
Our final home — our ultimate delight! 
The soul of man is like a waterfall, 

That comes at first from Heaven, its place of birth, 
And dashes down with flying spray and foam, 
Then disappears — ascending at the call 

Of Him who sent it hither to the Earth, 
Yet bids it hence to its Eternal Home ! 






Now when it happened, in those Pilgrim days, 
That death was busy with the Pilgrim band, 
The bee-hives (just as in the Mother-land) 

Were draped in black with bombazine and baize, 

And every hive, in turn, in Yorkshire phrase, 
Was whispered to, and made to understand 
That when a funeral-train was close at hand 

No swarm of bees should vex the public gaze ! 

O thou my Country, crape thy bees no more ! 
But clothe thyself in sackcloth ! . . . I foresee 
(So I foresay) what is to be thy lot ! 

For if thy heart be sordid at the core, 

And if thy Golden Calf remain with thee, 

Thy day is ending though thou know it not ! 



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Am I too rash, O Nemesis, thou hag ? 

My country is my country, right or wrong! 

I sing the Pilgrims — they deserve a song ! 
Yet Plymouth Rock, in spite of ' Yankee brag,' 
Is now a splintered, semi-hidden slag 

Which folk with guide-books (O the gaping throng ! ) ^j 

May miss a glimpse of, as they pass along, — 
Uplooking for a lone and lofty crag ! 
For O thou lump of sacred syenite, 

Thy Plymouth townsmen had thee hewn and split, 
And part of thee they took into the town, 
And there the fragment lies in open sight; — 

But the submerged remainder, bit by bit, 
Is dwindling — save in honor and renown ! 




WM 



CXI 

The very ' horn-book' too is now no more ; 

The spinning-wheel is in the garret hid ; 

The Worstead wonders, 1 which our mothers did 
To be 'ensamplers' to the babes they bore, 
Are out of date. Nor now (as heretofore) 

Is any child a ' lamb,' but is a ' kid ;' — 

(And so from Plymouth round to Pemaquid 
The 'sheep' are 'goats' — in the eternal score !) 
Yet let our babes be ' kidded ' or be ' lambed,' 

I cannot think that our Almighty Sire [names!) 
(Whose name is Love ! — which is the Name of 
Will give consent to have our infants damned ! — 

But O if Moloch has a furnace-fire, 

The Golden Calf shall perish in the flames ! 



1 So named from the town of Worstead in England 



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CXII 

A robin red-breast, twice the English size, 

Now hops on Burial Hill from stone to stone, 
And twitters in a retrospective tone 
And says (or seems to say) how wondrous wise 
Those English robins were to change their skies 
Ere England had become (as now is known) 
A nest too narrow for a brood so grown ! 
. . . Whereto this epopee of mine replies : 
God bless the Mother and the Daughter too ! 
I love them both, and by this lay of mine 
I seek to honor each, for both are one ! — 
And never may a discord, old or new, 

Disturb these double realms of single line, 
But may their destiny be jointly done! 



K 




CXIII 



For if the twain be but as one in will, 

The oak shall prosper, though the owls may hoot! — 
Nor shall the Maypole lack the dance and flute ! — 
^^ And though the winter whitens Pilgrim Hill, 
And though the spring too nippishly may kill 
All other mayflowers of a less repute ; — 
Yet this, our arbute, — deathless at the root, — 
May seem to die, yet be perennial still ! 
Imperishable flower, I know thy fate! 
Thou art the fair forerunner of a time 

When our re-consecrated Christian land 
Shall rise above its riches, and be great 

With such a greatness as shall be sublime 

For being greedless ! ... Is the time at hand ? 



,i 



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CXI V 



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Not yet, O starry groundling ! For thy gaze 
Turns coyly up, and pallor chills thy blush — 
Through half a dread that all our noisy rush 

That fills the envious world with such amaze 

Is bearing us to bedlam, like a craze ! 

Be wroth, O bud ! Put on an angry flush, 
And to the evil prophets answer, * Hush ! " 

Or bid them prophesy of purer days ! 

O flower of May ! Defy the chill of spring ! 

Rise from the snow, and spread thee to the sun ! 
Thou art as everlasting as the sky! 

Not Time himself hath any scythe to swing 

With power to slay thee ! Live, thou pretty one, 
Thou art our amarant — and not to die! 
FINIS. 



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